Finding your feet on a wonderful road...

Kangaroos, koalas, platypuses, wallabies, wombats and crocodiles…what do you immediately think of? Australia, of course! Over the last week, Perry and I visited the land down under. While we unfortunately didn’t get to spend time in the “outback” seeing them in their natural habitats (but we’ll definitely be back, Australia!), we did get to see all of these amazing animals in our short trip to Sydney and Cairns (pronounced “Cans”) at a zoo :) We weren’t sure how we would feel about Australia after we fell completely in love with New Zealand and didn’t want to leave, but I have to say that these two cities did not disappoint us. Sydney was quite lovely with its views of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge over Sydney Harbour. And Cairns was a dream come true as we checked an item off our bucket list by getting to visit the Great Barrier Reef. We started our time in Australia with four days in Sydney. As the capital city of the country, Sydney is quite large and has the same feel

If you follow our Instagram account (@wonderfulroad) then it's likely you've figured out by now that we spent the last nine days traveling through New Zealand. And based upon our “Stories” you probably already know that we are in awe of the beauty of this country. In the last week, we've constantly found ourselves saying things like, “Look at that!”, “Wow!”, “That’s incredible!”, “I have never seen anything so pretty!” and “Of course it looks like that because everywhere is beautiful here…” over and over and over again. In all honesty, when we were first planning this trip, New Zealand wasn’t on our list to visit. I know, it sounds like craziness especially with how I’m raving about it now, but we knew our time would be limited here if we came and we didn’t want to rush through the country. Thankfully, we decided to give in and visit anyway even if it meant we were only “dipping our toes in the water”. And honestly we already have a mental list of where we want to go w

Out of all the cities that are on our list to visit this fall, Hong Kong is one that topped the list as somewhere we couldn’t wait to explore. From its skyscrapers and busy streets filled with traffic and markets to its beautiful mountains and scenic promenades on the harbor, Hong Kong is truly an incredible city. It’s the only city this fall that we chose to do a food tour in, which speaks to the abundance of food options that it has. It’s a city that you could spend days walking around in and never get bored. There’s something on every corner waiting to be seen. The people are kind, friendly and helpful. Their way of life is similar to the West, so it’s easy to slide right in to the rhythms of the city. Visiting Hong Kong is easy as long as you’re okay with the heat and humidity. Hong Kong is small and large all at the same time. The part that you think of with its cityscape is not that large compared to many big cities of the world. The area of Hong Kong that most peo

Over the last week, we spent time exploring Beijing. Compared to Shanghai, Beijing is older and more historic. Where Shanghai has skyscrapers and lightshows, Beijing has temples, palaces and relics. The city has just as much of the hustle and bustle and mass swarms of people, but it lacks the business-feel and instead stands as the historical and political capital of China. For those that aren’t aware of the daily happenings of China, we visited Beijing at a very interesting time. On October 1 st , China celebrated its 70 th   birthday as the People’s Republic of China (PRC).     In a sense, this is their July 4 th   for those of us who are Americans. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong stood in Tiananmen Square and declared China as the PRC and a communist country. What this means is that China went ALL out on this celebration. There were parades (the “regular” kind with floats as well as military). There were fireworks. There were military jet and helicopter fly-overs. There we